The stars rely on the wardrobe department and stylists to make sure they look the part onscreen and off. From the look of the crowd at the 14th annual Costume Designers Guild awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel Tuesday night, the members of IATSE Local 892 don’t need any help getting dressed.

You’ve never seen “creative cocktail” attire until you’ve been at a gala with the likes of these creative forces, a who’s who of Academy Award-winners and legends that includes Ann Roth (Mildred Pearce), Ann Crabtree (Pan-Am), Sandy Powell (Hugo), Mark Bridges (The Artist) and Erin Benach (Drive).

Looking around the room, there were men in two-tone kilties blinged with giant rhinestones, brightly beaded vintage shifts and all manner of festooned headgear, from the plumed and netted fascinator on Guild president Mary Rose to the many guests in rakish vintage cocktail hats. One starlet — Chloë Grace Moretz — dared sport pink-dipped hair.

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The night wasn’t about how skillfully the guests dress themselves, however, but how hard they work to design the look of films and TV series. Unlike the BAFTAs and this Sunday’s Academy Awards, which lump all feature film nominees into one category, the Guild separates the categories into genres, and has separate offerings for television, even commercials, to honour the combined contributions of glove, hat and shoe makers, cutters, fitters and the ager-dyers that make up the village of any production’s wardrobe department, the kingdom of the costume designer.

Jane Lynch, the evening’s host, was played onto the stage to the strains of Madonna’s Vogue (or was it her own Glee version?) where she put in a half-joking request for a few of presenting sponsor Lacoste’s polos to add to her wardrobe of 35 custom-made Adidas track suits. The music proved an apt choice since over the course of the night, not one but two of Madonna’s past collaborators took home awards.

Noted film costumer Marlene Stewart was presented with the Disaronno Career Achievement Award for a range of credits that include Oliver Stone’s The Doors, Michael Mann’s Ali and To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar — not to mention early years as the costume designer of such influential Madonna music videos as Like A Prayer, Material Girl and Express Yourself. For W.E., the movie directed by Madonna about the relationship between the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, film costumer — and longtime Madonna tour stylist — Arianne Phillips won the period film category.

Gleeks were alsoout in full force, from Lynch to Coach Bieste (Dot Marie Jones). In a quick chat before the awards got underway, Lynch likened getting dressed for her role on Glee to stepping back into pajamas and laughed about how she looks forward to seeing what fresh combination of track suit stripes and solids costume designer Lou Eyrich will come up with. (Onstage, she also jested about the eventuality of Sue Sylverster’s indelible Adidas ensembles being inducted into the Smithsonian.)

Glee creator Ryan Murphy was on hand to pay tribute to the “obscenely talented and gloriously cool” Eyrich, who accepted wearing a beaded, chalk-pink 1960s dress perfect for doing the twist in (think Pat Nixon meets Cloris Leachman). Eyrich also took home her third consecutive award for best work on a contemporary television series, shared with creative partner in crime Jennifer Eve, who was a contrast in full pin-up mode of bombshell leopard-print satin dress and matching pillbox hat.

Trish Summerville thanked The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo director David Fincher for her win for contemporary film, but had a special shout-out to its star Rooney Mara, who was also in attendance (hair scraped back into a low bun, wearing a plunging purple cocktail dress and no jewellery to speak of), for “letting me torture her and cut her hair and bleach her eyebrows and dress her up and try and make her ugly — which didn’t work.”

Mara was just one of the many big- and small-screen stars — including the cast of hit ABC primetime soap Revenge — in attendance to pay tribute to their costume designers. Marcia Gay Harden and Ken Watanabe presented creative partners Clint Eastwood and costume designer Deborah Hopper with the “Distinguished Collaborator” award for their 28-year, 20-film working relationship.

Actress Kate Beckinsale rounded out the evening with a gracious and witty acceptance of the Lacoste Spotlight Award for her versatility in costumed roles. “I was a bit puzzled over exactly why I was receiving it and what I could possibly have done to deserve it,” Beckinsale acknowledged at the podium, deferring to being lucky to have mentored as an actress beginning at 17 in the hands of the Oscar-winning Phyllis Dalton to, more recently, Monique Prudhomme.

From Shakespearian ingenue to Ava Gardner to “bizarrely, a machine-gun-wilding vampire,” Beckinsale self-deprecatingly quipped, “I have rarely encountered a problem that could not somehow be solved with a visit to the wardrobe trailer. Whether it’s an unexpected pregnancy, a divorce, a stubborn camel-toe, you guys have it covered. I’ve had all of those!”